Trump officers shielded border czar Tom Homan from regular vetting regardless of bribery probe, report claims | EUROtoday

An FBI investigation into the hiring of President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan led prime company officers to bypass typical safety clearance procedures, a brand new report claims.

Homan’s standing as goal of a bribery investigation by FBI brokers – who allegedly recorded him accepting $50,000 in money from operatives posing as businessmen – was handed to Emil Bove, days earlier than his appointment as performing deputy lawyer basic in early January 2025, an MS NOW investigation revealed Tuesday.

Bove, previously Trump’s private lawyer, served as a prime liaison between the federal government and the transition earlier than he himself joined the DOJ.

Bove and different prime members of Trump’s transition workforce labored to make sure that the FBI investigation didn’t trigger hiccups in Homan’s background examine course of when the data reached them in early January, days earlier than the inauguration and weeks after it usually would have come up within the background clearance course of. The delay, in accordance with MS NOW, was on account of Trump’s workforce not submitting Homan and different incoming officers’ names to the FBI to start the background examine course of till December 2024, a month later than ordinary.

Homan finally was employed by the administration because the White House border czar, formally styled because the “White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations”. According to MS NOW, it stays unclear how Homan obtained a safety clearance after FBI brokers believed that he was not capable of go a background examine.

open picture in gallery

The Independent has requested the DOJ and DHS for touch upon Homan’s safety examine course of.

White House officers claimed that MS NOW’s reporting was an try and dredge up an outdated story. Homan declined to reply questions on his hiring course of when information of the probe initially broke in September.

“This was a blatantly political investigation, that found no evidence of illegal activity, and was yet another example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using its resources to target President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson advised the information outlet.

“Tom Homan is a career law enforcement officer and lifelong public servant who is doing a phenomenal job on behalf of President Trump and the country.”

Homan’s alleged involvement within the FBI probe amounted to an image of obvious bribery. MS NOW, previously MSNBC, reported in September that Homan was caught on video accepting $50,000 in a Cava bag from undercover FBI brokers who pretended to be in search of contracts associated to immigration enforcement below a second Trump administration.

The video has not been launched publicly. The White House and Homan have denied that it exists, and say that the change by no means occurred.

MS NOW’s reporting additionally said that the Homan investigation – which started in early 2024 below the Biden administration – was shut down by the Justice Department this summer season, months after Trump took workplace and after Bove and FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly “registered their displeasure” with the case persevering with.

Immigration enforcement was a key plank of Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign and has been a central focus of a number of prime officers in his second administration, together with Homan and senior White House aide Stephen Miller.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have swept the nation as officers goal to deport a minimum of 1 million undocumented immigrants within the first yr of Trump’s second time period.

A Department of Homeland Security information launch in mid-December claimed that simply over 600,000 deportations have taken place to this point in 2025 whereas greater than 2.5 different “illegal aliens” departed the U.S. voluntarily this yr. The latter quantity has not been confirmed by consultants outdoors of the Trump administration.

open picture in gallery

Democrats in Congress have referred to as for hearings over Homan’s alleged bribery case however Republican management of each chambers has stymied any effort by the president’s critics to name Homan for testimony.

“No one is above the law. The American people deserve to know why President Trump’s so-called Border Czar allegedly used his position and influence to take bribes in his own self-interest. Congress must investigate Tom Homan’s actions and his influence on government spending. We urgently request that you call him to testify before the Committee on this matter without delay,” wrote the House Homeland Security Committee’s rating Democratic member, Bennie Thompson, to the panel’s Republican chair in September.

Chris Murphy, the highest Senate Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees ICE and DHS, claimed that Homan’s case reveals the Trump administration’s twin requirements of justice for allies of the president and everybody else.

open picture in gallery

“See what happened to Tom Homan, his border czar, who literally accepted a bag of cash —$50,000 — and the investigation was dropped once Trump became president,” Murphy advised ABC News this fall.

“There are just two standards of justice now in this country. If you are a friend of the president, a loyalist of the president you can get away with nearly anything … but if you are an opponent of the president, you may find yourself in jail.”

Trump’s Justice Department moved to dismiss a felony case towards the aerospace big Boeing over the deadly 737 MAX airliner crashes after the corporate donated to the president’s inauguration fund.

Some of Trump’s supporters have acquired favorable therapy from the federal justice system together with the previous CEO of Johnny Rockets and Fatburger Andrew Wiederhorn, who noticed his company fraud fees dismissed and the lead prosecutor on his case fired for making anti-Trump statements. The prosecution of a former Republican congressman, Jeff Fortenberry, was ended lower than two weeks after Trump’s inauguration; the president pubicly complained in regards to the case and Fortenberry’s prosecution below the Biden administration.

The DOJ has targeted its attentions on felony investigations into Trump’s perceived enemies, like New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. In a collection Vanity Fair interviews printed earlier this month, Trump’s White House chief of workers, Susie Wiles, stated of James’s case: “Well, that might be the one retribution.”